Frequent Questions: Domain Statuses

This page lists some common domain name statuses that appear in the whois for a domain and what they mean.

clientHold

The most common reason for a domain to have this status is that the domain has expired. Renew your domain here.

This status is applied by the registrar to to stop the domain name from resolving on the internet. When domains have this status, none of its services (email, website, etc.) will work.

clientUpdateProhibited

This status is applied by the registrar to to prevent changes to the domain name.

clientTransferProhibited

This status is applied by the registrar to to prevent the domain name from being transferred. It is commonly referred to as the “transfer lock”.

To remove this protection it is necessary to contact the domain’s current registrar. To disable transfer lock at Gandi, read here.

clientDeleteProhibited

This status is applied by the registrar to to prevent the domain name from being deleted.

clientRenewProhibited

This status is applied by the registrar to to prevent the domain name from being renewed.

serverHold

This status is applied by the registry in charge of the extension, and prevents the domain’s resolution.

It is commonly put in place because the domain may not have been validated (if applicable to the ccTLD), for Legal/Abuse reasons, or possibly DNS ZoneCheck failure

pendingTransfer

This status means that the domain is currently in the end of being transferred from one registrar to another.

During this period, the only possible action on the domain is that the transfer can be cancelled or accepted.

If, after 5 days of being in this status no action is taken, the domain will be transferred to its new registrar.

serverTransferProhibited

This status is put in place by the registry in charge of the extension and it prevents the domain’s transfer.

If you see this status, it was likely put in place by the registry because the domain is in pendingDelete (the 5-day perid before a GTLD is released for new registration), or it has just recently been created or transferred.